Amazon.com is preparing to take on Apple Computer in digital music by introducing its own portable music player that would be linked to an online music service, according to several music industry executives involved with negotiations with Amazon.

Unlike Apple, which sells songs for 99 cents each, Amazon will offer a service that charges a monthly or annual fee to customers, who will have the right to fill up their music players with as many songs as they like, the executives said. When they stop paying the fee, the music on the player will be disabled.

Amazon has not told the music industry what the fee would be, but similar subscription services range from $5 to $15 a month.

Jen

Okay this is phenomenolly stupid. A music player that self-destructs if you stop paying the fee? First of all, a hack will be written about 5 nanoseconds after this thing is released. Secondly, not even greedy Apple does self-destruct programming like that. Nobody will care if the pricing is all you can eat if you can ONLY play the music on the player and it expires! Remember how Apple was going to sell all those TV programs for the ViPod, so that people wouldn't do things like, oh, Torrent The Boondocks and rip movies to it? Idiots.

I CAN GET ALL THE MUSIC I WANT FOR FREE

Why would I pay Amazon for crippleware? They would lease my machine to me and shut it off when I don't pay them. Why? I still have to pay for it, right?